JJ DiMartini November 18, 2013 Kines 469W Philosophy Health and physical education should be the class that

not only teaches functional motor skill development, but also teaches lifelong interpersonal skills and problem solving. Not only will my health and physical education class teach students functional motor skill development and lifelong interpersonal skills, but I will also in cooperate health and fitness concepts. In todays world there is a huge push for being responsible healthy individuals, and I plan on instilling this into my students at a young age. I am passionate about teaching elementary students because I want to be the first health and physical education teacher they have in the educational journey. I want to get them interested in knowing how and why it is important to be healthy individuals. I want to be the person that gets every student excited for health and physical education and prepares them mentally and physically for their future endeavors. I will teach by the skills theme approach and will base my teaching on the value orientations of learning process, self-actualization, and social responsibility. I will assess every student with performance-based assessments to ensure that each student is assessed numerous times throughout each unit. With obesity being so widely spread as it is today, children need to learn at a young age how to maintain a healthy lifestyle. In my physical education class, I will teach my students health related concepts, such as nutrition, body systems, and fitness, by integrating this knowledge into activities in physical education class. Young children are like sponges and I believe that if these students are

introduced to health concepts and healthy choices throughout elementary school, these students will retain and hopefully put this information to use in their everyday lives. The skill-theme approach deals with altering the classroom experiences to cater to the students developmental level, rather than their age or grade level. By altering the experiences to each students ability, student success rates, participation, and enthusiasm will all noticeably increase. The skill-theme approach will teach movement concepts of space-awareness, effort, and relationships through locomotor, non-manipulative, and manipulative skill themes. Skill themes, such as traveling, balancing, and transferring weight, will be introduced and then expanded on in dance, gymnastics, and modified games. Performance-based assessments are a critical aspect of health and physical education. Students will be constantly assessed on all levels; cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. Different forms of formative assessments will be administered during every class, such as offering positive and specific feedback, to increase student understanding and individual ability. Assessing during every class gives students a fair opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of skill and the ability to perform and develop such skills. All students need to be constantly succeeding in all aspects of class. By using skills such as intertask variation and teaching by invitation, all students will be able to succeed at any ability level during class. Every class will have students working at different ability levels, so it is the teachers job to make sure that all students are working at a developmentally appropriate level and consistently challenging themselves to increase their abilities. By taking the knowledge and skills learned in health and physical education, students will be able to apply them to everyday life and become healthy physically literate individuals.